Four Years After Its Debunking, Union Still Promotes 'Snyder Cut Schools' Myth

After Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder won re-election to a second term in 2014, his campaign manager gave an interview in which he described how instrumental the debunking of myths about school funding cuts had been to Snyder’s victory.

Democratic gubernatorial candidate Mark Schauer had campaigned heavily on claims that Snyder had cut school funding in Michigan.

“Another high point was the media coming around and correcting the education lies because we not only had the data on our side, but there were those in the public who were persuadable on this issue and they were persuaded,” Snyder’s campaign director, Kyle Robertson, told MIRS News.

Michigan Capitol Confidential was the first news outlet to report that school funding had not been cut. The Mackinac Center for Public Policy’s daily news site published a story on July 26, 2013, detailing the reasons why the claims of a $1 billion school funding cut were inaccurate. Eventually, the mainstream media followed in calling out the false claims.

Debunking those claims was not difficult: The actual appropriations are listed in annual budget bills, and the House and Senate Fiscal agencies routinely post the K-12 school funding history on their websites. These sources made clear that state funding for public schools had increased in each year of Snyder’s tenure, a pattern that has continued in his second term.

On Oct. 16, 2014, the Citizens Research Council of Michigan directly engaged the claim, observing that, “Education funding has taken a front row seat in the current political debate.”

The organization asked, “Is school funding up or down compared to four years ago?”

Its finding: “Here the answer is an unequivocal ‘up’.”

Despite the reputational damage from being on the wrong side of the facts during the 2014 gubernatorial election, the state’s largest teachers union has never backed away from the “funding cut” claims and continues to trumpet further mythical declines.

Most recently, on March 20, Michigan Education Association President Paula Herbart repeated the claim in space provided by The Detroit News in a weekly “Labor Voices” feature. She wrote: “To help pay for that corporate tax break, [the Legislature and governor] slashed $1 billion from school funding — knocking Michigan to the bottom of Great Lakes states in school funding.”

According to the Senate Fiscal Agency, state dollars earmarked for K-12 funding increased from $10.80 billion in 2010-11 (former Gov. Jennifer Granholm’s last budget) to $11.09 billion in 2011-12 (Snyder’s first budget.) Annual K-12 funding has since risen to $12.86 billion in the current school year. That’s a rise of more than $2 billion since Snyder first took office.

The MEA didn’t respond to an email seeking comment.